


Fallen

by ABrighterDarkness



Series: OYL Bingo [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt Sam Wilson, Injury, Injury Recovery, M/M, Sam Wilson-centric, Steve Rogers Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-20 18:15:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22547662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABrighterDarkness/pseuds/ABrighterDarkness
Summary: Steve's voice in his ear was all the warning that registered before he was falling.  Whatever he had been hit with seemed to have knocked the wings out of commission and they weren’t reengaging. There was a split second of instinctive panic as he attempted to scramble all of his training to the forefront of his mind.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson
Series: OYL Bingo [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1567447
Comments: 6
Kudos: 80
Collections: On Your Left - SamSteve Bingo





	Fallen

**Author's Note:**

> On Your Left Bingo - Injured while on a Mission

“Sam! Look out!  _ Sam!!” _

Steve's voice in his ear was all the warning that registered before he was falling. Whatever he had been hit with seemed to have knocked the wings out of commission and they weren’t reengaging. There was a split second of instinctive panic as he attempted to scramble all of his training to the forefront of his mind.

It wasn’t going to help him. The treeline was coming towards him way too quickly for Sam to do much more than brace for impact.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple. Being knocked out of the air during a hostile situation brought in a multitude of factors that Sam couldn’t plan for. Like his impromptu landing spot being in the dead center of unfriendly territory. Or falling through a deluge of weapons fire. Weapons fire that turned his direction. He couldn’t stifle the cry of pain when one hit it’s mark through the meat of his thigh, he supposed he ought to be grateful that his freefall meant their aim was miserable at best, it didn’t feel like it hit the femoral artery. Small consolation but still. 

He didn’t waste his breath attempting to call out to the team. The warning cry through the comms unit was enough to tell him that they’d seen him take the hit, that they knew he was going down. Taking the time to tell them what they already knew was a waste of energy that he needed to focus elsewhere. Like somehow managing to survive this disaster. A frantic scan told him that he was too low for the parachute embedded in the EXO’s system to do a whole lot of good but he knew that he had to slow the speed of impact if he wanted better chances at surviving the crash. 

Too late, he realized with a sickening jolt as he fell feet-first into the treetops. Sam grunted at the impact of branch after branch against his body, his ribs protested the violent assault. Despite the pain, he could acknowledge that with the trees taking the impact of his momentum, at least he shouldn’t hit the ground as hard. Maybe that was the twisted humor he often pretended not to have, but there it was. 

His shoulder wrenched painfully as he slammed against another branch while another grazed at his temple. Sam had just enough presence of mind to twist his body when the impact with the ground came sharply, forcing the energy of the collision to spread as he managed to roll rather than landing flat. It still hurt, goddamn did it hurt. 

But if the pain was any sort of indication, he’d survived. 

When he came to a stop, Sam couldn’t do more than curl in on himself, panting through pain and exertion. His eyes were open but his vision was spinning and blurry, ears ringing, and his body throbbing. There were scrambling footsteps nearby but he couldn’t gather the focus to look. It if was an unfriendly then he was even more out of luck than he already was because he had absolutely zero ability to fight back at the moment.

He could vaguely make out the sound of pain filled grunts and thuds of something hitting the ground, couldn’t pinpoint them and couldn’t fully reconcile what he was hearing. Instead, he focused the best he could on breathing through the immense pain though his battered ribs loudly protested each gasp of air. The coppery tang in his mouth caused his stomach to roll as much as the pain itself.

Suddenly a heavy hand came to rest gently on his shoulder and Sam couldn’t bite back the pained groan at the pressure. The hand immediately jerked back and in its place a voice urgently called his name, clearly trying to gain his attention.

“Sam, c’mon look at me.” Steve. Oh thank god. Sam exhaled heavily, wincing at the way even that jarred his body and rolled his head against the ground to try to look up. Everything was spinning and too dark and too bright all at the same time. “There you go. Stay with me, sweetheart. I got you.”

“Yeah, I got him. He’s in pretty bad shape.” What? Sam frowned in confusion at the nonsensical comment. “Get that jet as close as you can. Gonna have to be careful moving him.” Oh. The comms. Whatever knocked out the wings must’ve gotten his comm unit, too. He automatically cried out when unexpected pressure was put on the wound on either side of his thigh. Shot. Right.

“I know, I know, I’m so sorry,” Steve said, voice strained and hitched. “Stay with me, Sam. You keep those eyes on me.”

He tried. Oh he tried. Sam did his best to hang onto the rushed, panic-tinged rambling that Steve was speaking. The good news was that the pain had numbed slightly, along with his senses. The ringing in his ears was replaced with cotton-wool. Had he been in his right mind he would know that wasn’t  _ good _ news by any stretch. But just then, the numbness was more than welcome.

“No, no, Sam, sweetheart, don’t you close those eyes,” Steve insisted urgently, leaning over him to catch his stare. “You stay with me. The team’s just landed the jet. They’ll be here in just a minute.” Steve’s words hitched oddly and there was a strange expression that Sam knew he didn’t like seeing on his face but he couldn’t understand what it was or why. “Until then, you stay with me. You’re doing so good, sweetheart. So good. Hold on, Sam. Just a little longer.”

He could do that, couldn’t he?

Steve shifted from his line of sight and the pressure of his hands on Sam’s leg was traded for a tight wrapping. When he came back into sight, he leaned forward and pressed a feather-light kiss to Sam’s forehead, ever mindful of the multitude of injuries. “We’re going to move you now,” Steve said quietly but clearly. “We’re getting you on the plane and getting you help.”

When they moved him, it was obvious that they were being as gentle and careful as possible. If and when Sam regained more sense of himself he would be grateful for the care they were taking. At that moment, however, all he could register was overwhelming pain. He thought he might have voiced the protest but he couldn’t be sure. Not when it felt like the tips of his toes to the crown of his skull screamed in agony at being jarred from the state of numbness. 

_ Sam’s falling. He can feel the coolness of the air rushing past him. The treeline and the ground is coming close far too quickly and there’s nothing he can do to slow the fall. Sam braces himself for impact, hoping he’ll survive it. His arms curl up to protect his head just before-- _

Sam jerked awake, eyes wide in panic seeing nothing in the aftermath of the dream and confusion. Something was on his face, skewing his ability to take in his surroundings, when he made to reach for whatever it was, his limbs moved sluggishly.

“Easy, easy, Sam,” a familiar deep voice spoke soothingly from his left. Sam slowly rolled his head to try to place the voice and found Steve sitting on the edge of a chair, both of his hands reaching to carefully curl around Sam’s. “You’re safe. We’re in New York at the hospital. I don’t know how much you remember just now but your wings took a hit, Tony’s looking into it already, but you took a pretty rough fall.”

And then he remembered. Remembered losing control of the wings, the fall, and then not much past that. His brows furrowed in confusion as he tried to remember more, remember anything else. He tried to speak, though he wasn’t sure what exactly he meant to say and Steve quickly shifted closer.

“It’s okay, don’t strain yourself,” he said gently. “You’ve been here a couple of days and under heavy sedation, but they’ve been taking good care of you. All you gotta worry about is letting yourself heal.”

Sam wanted to argue. Wanted to say more, to ask what happened or if anyone else was injured. How many was a couple of days? But whatever medication the hospital had been giving him was doing its job well and Sam was pulled back under. 

He awoke several times in similar fashion: jolted from sleep with a sense of panic and disoriented, Steve calmly telling him where he was and that he was safe, and the medication pulling him abruptly back under. There were a few moments of true coherency where Sam was able to remember and understand what had happened and where he was and they grew steadily more frequently. But every time, it was Steve's voice reassuring him that he was safe. 

“How’re you holding up?” Natasha asked him on one of his first clear days after he was stable enough to have the various tubes removed, folded into Steve’s abandoned chair in a way that looked ridiculously painful to Sam but she seemed comfortable enough.

Sam shrugged slightly from the hospital bed where he still hadn’t been allowed out of on his own as of yet. “I’m getting there. Getting a bit of cabin fever,” he admitted. “I’ll definitely be ready to see outside this place.” Natasha smirked in understanding. “Has Stark found out anything more about what they hit me with? Steve won’t say anything.”

  
“Of course he won’t,” Natasha said with a flat look. “He’s worried about you.”

“I know,” Sam sighed. “I still wanna know what knocked out the wings though.”

“Tony thinks it was a modified EMP,” she answered thoughtfully. “His suit has taken hits from similar before and when he took over the building and maintenance of your wings he adapted them to resist the same ones his suits have taken hits from.”

“So was I a test run for Iron Man, then?”

“We’re not entirely sure yet,” Natasha frowned slightly. “Tony has been going over the data collected from the mission and it does seem as though someone is trying to build on or improve the way their EMP works and how it goes about disrupting specific tech. If you want details you’ll have to talk to him once you’re out of here. But we don’t know if they were aiming for Tony, for you, or just whatever tech they could get lucky enough to hit.”

“Was he flying nearby?” Sam frowned, attempting to remember those last few seconds before the wings quit responding.

Natasha studied him for a moment in silence and he wasn’t sure that she was actually going to end up answering the question. “No,” she answered shortly.

Sam looked away from her, studying his hands fidgeting with the blanket in his lap. “So they intentionally aimed at me,” he tilted his head trying to reconcile the new information. “Was he able to get the wings operational or did the fall damage them?”

“They did take quite a bit of damage considering they weren’t retracted when you went down,” Natasha responded. “Tony had them back in order and resistant to the new EMP frequencies before you managed to wake up.”

Before Sam could ask anything further the door to his room cracked open and Steve pushed through, smiling brightly when he saw Sam awake and sitting upright. He crossed the short distance and pressed a lingering kiss to his lips before dropping a bag onto his lap.

“What’s this?” Sam frowned, pulling the bag open. It didn’t take him more than a glance to recognize it as one of his ready go-bags. He had come to the habit of having a couple of bags ready to grab-and-go in different locations in case they were needed.

“Thought you might be ready to get out of here,” Steve said with a grin.

“Oh thank god,” Sam groaned. “It’s about damned time!”

“Doc’s said you’ll still have to take it easy for a couple more weeks,” Steve warned in a tone that left no room for argument. “But yeah, they’re ready to discharge you whenever you’re ready.”

Natasha unfolded herself from the chair and pressed a light kiss to Sam’s and then Steve’s cheeks before turning towards the door, “I’ll leave you boys to get squared away. I’ll let Tony know that we’ll be inbound.”

“Thanks Nat,” Steve smiled warmly. 

Discharging from the hospital went easily enough, even though the doctors--and Steve--insisted on a wheelchair until his leg was more fully healed. Sam was far from impressed with the idea but conceded at the anxious concern displayed all too clearly on Steve’s face. He looked as ragged and weary--wrinkled clothing, unshaven, the odd tightness in his jaw and shoulders--as Sam felt. Sam knew that he had been at the hospital on a near permanent basis whether Sam had been awake or not. The concern had clearly taken its toll, even with the serum, Steve looked like he ought to have crumbled days ago.

In all, it had taken three hours to get from his hospital room to the apartment that he and Steve shared at Tony’s Tower. Despite his eagerness to be home, the excitement of the day wore heavily on him and he couldn’t put up even a token effort to argue when Steve carefully lifted him out of the wheelchair. There was even less arguing to be had when he was settled into the comfort of their bed that he had missed dearly. 

And then Steve was kicking out of his boots and stripping out of his jeans and t-shirt and climbing into bed beside him. A heavy arm slipped under Sam’s pillow and around his shoulders, tugging gently until Sam shifted, exchanging the pillow for the comfort of Steve’s chest. Steve’s other arm reached across to encircle Sam as much as possible, shifting and pulling closer until they were pressed together from where Sam’s head rested to their knees. Steve increased the contact by pressing his lips to the top of Sam’s head and exhaling a shaky breath.

“I’m so glad you’re home,” Steve said quietly into his hair. Sam stretched out his arm to wrap tightly over Steve’s waist and tilted his head enough to kiss the closest patch of skin. “Some days,” he continued, voice quivering slightly. “Some days, I hate how much I need you in the air, having my back. I hate that I pulled you back into fighting. I’d take every goddamn hit just to never see you like that again.”

“Stop that,” Sam said, shaking his head and tightening his grip on Steve’s waist. “You didn’t knock me out of the air, Steve. This isn’t on you.” 

“Scared the hell out of me, Sam,” Steve confessed.

“I know,” Sam frowned, releasing his hold enough to run his hand comfortingly over Steve’s side in slow, steady strokes. “But I’m alright. Right here.” He shifted slowly up onto his forearm, ignoring the twinge in his shoulder to stretch up for a kiss. Steve leaned to meet him without hesitation, his hand rising to gently cup the back of Sam’s neck, thumb stroking against his jaw. When Sam’s arm trembled slightly from bearing the weight, Steve shifted under him, rolling until Sam was on his back with Steve leaning over him, careful to keep his own weight off of him, all without letting go of his claim on Sam’s lips. 

Reluctantly, Steve pulled back leaning forward enough to rest their foreheads together, “I love you, Sam. I’m--I…” he drifted off, closing his eyes tightly in frustration.

Sam tilted up and caught his lips again. He kept the kiss firm but gentle until Steve sighed against him and some of the fearful tension started to ease. When Steve’s hand drifted from his face to grip gently at his hip, Sam leaned into the kiss further, tracing lips with the tip of his tongue and diving in when Steve parted willingly for him. 

The kiss morphed into something slow and lazy as Sam quickly began losing steam. Steve withdrew again and settled back onto the bed, pulling Sam with him until he was sprawled over Steve’s chest once again. Sam fell asleep swiftly to soft kisses to his hair and a broad hand stroking over his back. 

It was good to be home.


End file.
